


The Principle of Uncertainty

by LadyMerlin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: And everyone can tell, Angst, But John is clueless, Direct references to TRF, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, Hints towards bad things happening in the Haitus, Loneliness, M/M, No major spoilers for S3, Pining, Post Fall, Sherlock is in love with John, Sherlock's Childhood, Unrequited Love, Words are powerful, post reunion, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMerlin/pseuds/LadyMerlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock never used to speak, before he met John. There was never any point to it, because no one understood him. But when he meets John his lips part and his heart spills out, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. And even though John speaks the same language as him, there are some things which Sherlock cannot bring himself to say out loud.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Principle of Uncertainty

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been struggling with another fic for almost four days now, and then one morning I woke up and wrote this instead. The show is going to be the death of me. And yes, that is a reference to Heisenberg's Principle of Uncertainty.
> 
> This fic has not been beta'd. I own nothing.

Sherlock Holmes does not like speaking.

_Sometimes I don’t talk for days on end._

It hadn’t been an exaggeration when he had said it. It still isn’t one. He genuinely thinks speaking is a waste of time; an inefficient form of communication, because clearly single words can have a hundred different connotations which aren’t written in dictionaries, and they can mean different things to different people based on their individual experiences.

He has resigned himself to living in a world where everyone speaks a different language, and they’re doomed to never really being able to communicate with each other.

The only thing he really liked in that Star Trek thing John made him watch, was the idea of a mind meld. It seemed like such an efficient, logical way of communicating facts and information. He hadn’t spoken for three days after, because he’d been thinking up ways in which it could be made reality. Mycroft had told him to stop thinking what he was thinking via text, the bastard, and John had told him to quit sulking, which was bizarre because he wasn’t sulking even a little bit.  

He had made this observation while he was very young, and had proceeded to spend several months terrifying several different people (social workers and doctors and teachers, but never his parents) by his apparently selective mutism. Honestly, he still didn’t understand why everyone wanted him to babble like an idiot to children who couldn’t even spell their own names, when there were far superior conversationalists waiting for him at home. He’d watch Father and Mycroft play chess and talk about politics and economics and law and it would all be _boring_ because it was just one rule after another, but he’d listen regardless, and absorb, because all information was potentially useful. Everything new was interesting, until proven otherwise.

Mummy would come home at night and speak to him about chemistry and war fare and espionage. They never spoke down to him, never once, and he had never understood while the priest in the church had thrown holy water at him that one time when he’d deduced that the lead in the pipes was poisoning the children in Sunday school.

To him, every word is a gift, because he only uses it when he means it, when he knows that the recipient of the sentence is going to appreciate it in its full sense. He much prefers writing, because there is an expected margin of error in that form of communication; people expect that writers had a specific intent in mind and that they’re never really going to be able to get the same intent in their own minds, exactly. People expect speech to be perfect. Everyone talks about _talking_ , about telling the truth, about spilling your guts to the people you love and being honest, and it’s so _hateful_ he could _scream_.

When he meets John, something snaps in him. Some barrier inside his head that kept all the words and thoughts inside, even if he’d fully crafted them into sentences. Something inside him recognizes something inside John, and when he makes his first deduction out loud and John says

‘ _Amazing_ ’

and

_‘Fantastic’_

and

‘ _Brilliant_ ’

it’s a feeling he’s never felt before. It’s like John’s filter is much less careful, and he asks,

_You do know you’re saying that aloud_

And John says

_Sorry_

But Sherlock doesn’t think he means it at all, and it’s a minor miracle. Like something he hadn’t even dared to hope was real, even if he doesn’t know why. Mycroft obviously understands, so it might be something completely mundane, and Sherlock looks through years and years of archived data of mundane things, his books of everything Mycroft has ever said, of everything he has ever heard other boring people say, and there are no answers to be found. He doesn’t know why John is different, or special, but in a good way. He doesn’t understand, and maybe that’s the miracle. An unsolvable mystery.

And his cup literally runneth over. He keeps talking, on and on and on, every minor observation, every tiny details that had never used to be worth his time, he keeps saying things. And John – John keeps saying things too, good things. Kind things. He clearly has never had a filter, except the boring one which is required in polite company, and John _understands_.

That’s the miracle, then. That he and John speak exactly the same variant of this language, and it’s a miracle. Because human beings have always been doomed to blunder around, never able to really communicate, never really understanding another person. It was always going to be an approximation, and it could get close, but it would never be perfect. And at first it feels like John speaks _almost_ the same language, but it becomes clearer and clearer that actually, it’s the same.

John is in his head. John is performing the equivalent of a mind meld. John is there, in every corner of his life, listening to everything Sherlock has always wanted to say, but never been able to.

And then slowly, he starts wanting to say things that he has never wanted to in his life, but that he wants to say now. Kinder things. He wants to be kind, but he doesn’t know how. Because he has only ever experienced a brusque sort of kindness, and not the kind of loving sort that he wants to shower on John. He wants to be kind, and nice, and say insipid things and _mean them_ , for once in his life.

But he is not sure of his reception. John keeps saying he’s not gay, and every time is like a knife wound to the gut, and he wonders if his defences have been lowered, along with his mental filter. Because he never used to be hurt by the implication that he wasn’t good enough, or that he wasn’t wanted in any capacity. But this hurts, _badly_. He wants to be wanted, but he doesn’t – he can’t. He doesn’t know how to say it. He is not experienced, like John is. When John meets a woman he likes, he is charming and kind and gentle, more so than he normally is.

Sherlock has never met anyone he wants to be kind to, except John. And while he doesn’t think John finds him particularly kind, he hasn’t seen him before. He doesn’t have any basis for comparison, because when John is around, Sherlock is different. It is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, where a particle cannot be truly observed in its natural state, because to observe it is to alter its behaviour. Sherlock is a particle and John is the light, and to be seen, light must be shone on Sherlock, and in the light of the day, Sherlock is not the same as he was when he was left unseen, and unnoticed.

It is difficult, to keep the words inside. They want to roll off his tongue and spill into the air, where everyone can hear them. He wants to climb onto rooftops and _scream_ them into the night sky. He wants to whisper them into John’s ear, if John would let him. John will not let him. He doesn’t think. They speak the same language, he knows, but he doesn’t think John would appreciate- he wouldn’t. Nothing good can come of telling the truth.

So he lies in wait, for John to go to bed, before he goes to bed himself. He lies on the floor, wrapped in a duvet, curled onto the prickly carpet separating him from the flimsy floor, and talks. He talks for hours on end, night after night, until his voice is hoarse and his eyes can’t stay open anymore. He whispers into the floor, everything he has always wanted to say, but he never will. Every word is like a gift, for John. It is a piece of Sherlock’s heart that is being absorbed by the carpet, and no one will ever know it. Not even John.

221B is an old property and most of it was patched on later on, like adding new corners to a fraying patchwork quilt. The walls and floors are strong, but thin. Privacy is a construct based on respect, he knows, so he doesn’t say anything when he spends the night listening, inadvertently, to John touching himself in his bed.

But he is a scientist, and he has modulated his volume so that John will never be able to hear his voice, through the floor and the carpet and the space between them. And still, he hopes that somehow, against all measures taken, John will hear him. That he will hear Sherlock confessing his love through the floorboards and he will fly upstairs in his thin night shirt and his boxers, and he will kneel on the floor beside Sherlock and _kiss_ him, like their lives depended on it. That he will kiss Sherlock, like he’s giving back every precious word through his mouth. It is an ~~idle~~ recurring dream.

He wants to muster up the courage to tell John, to his face. He wants his heart to go to John, in whatever pieces are left of it. He wants John to have _everything_. But Mycroft had told him that words were like gifts, and that gifts could be rejected too. He thinks that if John turns away his heart, after Sherlock had clawed into his ribcage to find it for him, still beating and bloody and _alive_ , he will die. He will wither and shrivel up and lie there, with his heart pumping futilely in his cupped hands, and he will die.

So he doesn’t say anything. He keeps his mouth shut, difficult as it is around John. He tries to tell John in other ways, that Sherlock values him, and appreciates him, and that he _loves_ him. He makes tea and cleans up experiments and occasionally the laundry. Mycroft gives him strange looks when he does the shopping, and he ignores them. Lestrade very deliberately doesn’t say anything when Sherlock hands an umbrella over to John, because he knows that Sherlock isn’t in the habit of carrying them around (they remind him of his brother, and he doesn’t mind the rain anyway). But for John. For John, he would climb mountains and move planets.

Instead, he jumps off a building for John, and hopes that he understands what Sherlock has been trying to say.

When he comes ~~home~~ back to London, there is a clash between old habits and new ones. He flinches when people come too close to him, and he then messages Lestrade when he gets the niggling feeling that somewhere, somehow, he is being _wrong_. He yells at Mrs. Hudson but he fixes her heating for her, and tells off the lady next door who leeching off her unprotected wifi. He can’t take any sugar in his tea, because- because. It takes not three days for Mrs. Hudson to notice, and he can’t categorise the look on her face. He still goes off, hunting for criminals and wrong-doers with John, but they don’t come home together.

Every night he takes a shower and curls onto the floor in his pyjamas, wrapped in a duvet on the prickly carpet, and presses his face into the floor (the indent is still there) and whispers his love for John.

He doesn’t know why he’s whispering though. There’s no one there in the room below to hear him, anymore.


End file.
